A User-Refined Experience

I have always wanted to know the average speed of a cheetah. To find a legitimate answer, I have three options. First, I could walk all the way to a library and open a written encyclopedia. I could also pay money for a subscription to an online database such as Encyclopedia Britannica. The most convenient method of all, however, is a simple visit to wikipedia.org, where the information I need is available instantly and for free. It is for this purpose that Wikipedia was designed, as a source of widely available, free information – whether or not this information is to be used in an academic context is a different debate entirely.

Although Wikipedia calls itself an encyclopedia, it in truth can never be a true encyclopedia, as its accuracy fluctuates and is dependent on edits from millions of users. However, that is not to say that it is devoid of accuracy and truthful information simply because there is no single author whose name is attached to each article. The facts for nearly everything are most likely to be true. Could you think of a reason why anyone would want to purposefully post an inaccurate average speed of the cheetah? Of course in theory such people exist, but Wikipedia itself operates on the assumption that people who care about maintaining and protecting truth of information exist as well.

Lanier criticizes the fluidity of the information on Wikipedia, citing a personal example in which he is portrayed as a filmmaker. After encountering one piece of erroneous information, he has extrapolated the idea of inaccuracy to encompass the entire database, when in truth he has no way of judging the accuracy of Wikipedia as a whole, as its comprehensiveness is beyond that of any established encyclopedia and therefore its validity is really a matter of trust – trust in the millions of other users and their intents in maintaining truth on the internet. It is in this area that Wikipedia does have its limitations. In academia, information must always be connected to individuals, as one’s reputation is dependent on the reliability and accuracy of one’s sources. In order to be fully accountable, one’s sources must be tied to other academicians, whose works cite others, and so on. Wikipedia fails in this respect, as it humbly provides information without linking it to individual authors who are accountable for the information on each page. However, Lanier fails to realize that the structure of Wikipedia prevents it from linking to authors, as there are so many edits to each entry that it would be impossible to hold any single author accountable for the entire entry. The focus of the website is the same as that of any open source piece of software. Sure, it may have bugs, and if it does, there is nobody to blame. However, the individual who finds a bug has the opportunity – rather, the obligation, to fix the error or make it known to individuals who can fix it. Lanier calls this structure “maoist”, noting that it “removes the scent of humans” from informational works. One must remember that each entry in Wikipedia is made and maintained by humans all around the world, and it is not a website designed to express opinions; rather, it is merely a source of information designed by and for those who believe that factual information should be a free domain.